The Interview

The Interview (2014)

52% on Rotten Tomatoes, out of 116 reviews

Runtime: 112 minutes

Directed by: Evan Goldberg/Seth Rogen

Starring: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Randall Park, Lizzy Caplan, Diana Bang

From: Columbia

Yes, I finally saw this little movie that caused an incredible amount of havoc and chaos, and something that amazingly became world news, something I could not have ever foreseen until it happened. As it was free on Instant I figured I should check it out. Well... I know it has its fans, but I am not one of those people. I'll explain why in my Letterboxd review below. I'll be back tomorrow night.

True story: the day that news broke of the threats to bomb all United States theatres that showed this film, I had a parent recommend to me that I not go see it on the big screen. I appreciated their concern but I mentioned that I was never interested in seeing it anyhow (the trailers did not make it look too funny to me) so they had nothing to worry about.

As we all remember all the chaos that happened surrounding this film (although I've never heard why they moved the release date about two months from late October to late December; in hindsight, what an extremely stupid and pointless move that was) I won't go over that. However, they probably should have expected such a reaction. I know there was Team America but times are different now than they were back then. Basing it on a real life figure and it being the head of a government that has committed a number of horrific atrocities against its own citizens... I just know some people who were quite aggravated with all that.

With all that out of the way, I personally found this movie to be brutally unfunny. While I don't go out of my way to see films from the two stars, I have watched Pineapple Express before (one day I will again so I can give it a Letterboxd review) and I find it to be a pretty entertaining film. This, though, most of the jokes just landed with a thud and weren't funny at all.

It was so bad it became painful as I had to watch almost 2 hours of a failed comedy where moment after moment failed, and I had to watch wannabe intellectual (but not as smart as he thinks he is) James Franco overact to an aggravating degree, mugging to the camera and acting like a clown as he thought it was humorous. It was not. More than one person I follow described the full performance as “full retard” and while I don't like using such a term, it is a strong descriptor of just how buffoonish he acted, oblivious to how awful he came off. That's not even taking into account how much of an ogre that character is.

I don't even want to go more in-depth on this, and how a violent finale did not do anything to save this. Now this movie will forever have the reputation of causing all the chaos it did and doing a lot of harm to Sony, but to me it's all for a movie I'd rather not remember and I don't think should be remembered.